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Solving Black And White: (Edge Connection)

One of the fundamental techniques of solving a Black And White puzzle which most beginners would not know is this edge rule. If two circles of the same colour are placed at an edge/corner, they must be connected along an edge.

Take a look at Puzzle No.37


You may be wondering how to start this puzzle!


Have a look at the marked circles. Both are black and placed at an edge/corner.


They have to be connected along an edge, which always gives two possibilities (two directions), marked in red and blue.


The connection along the red line is not possible due to the presence of the white circle. Hence the connection has to be made along the blue line. Pretty cool, isn't it? Now the puzzle is a piece of cake.


Using the 2x2 rule, you can place the three white circles. Now observe the circle at R3C2. It has to connect with other white circles and there is only one possible way, marked in red.


Using your brains and the rules, you should easily reach this situation.


And finally, with a small ending funda, complete it.

Now, looking back, did you realise how easy this puzzle becomes when you use this edge rule? I'm sure you will find Black And White puzzles very easy to solve now :-)

Other Solving Techniques

4 comments:

Rohan Rao said...

The reason the circles have to be connected along an edge is because, if you connect them through circles across the grid, you will find that one section of the grid gets completely blocked, thus preventing the other set of circles to be connected.

Rajesh Kumar said...

Thanks Rohan for explaining it so clearly.

Any funda to solve the weights puzzles?

Rohan Rao said...

The simplest funda of solving Weights puzzle is trial and error ;-)
I'm not too sure if there are any direct rules that you can apply other than the multiplication equality.

I'll check it out. I know you asked for Minesweeper, I'm working on it too. Trying to find some good puzzles in which the techniques can be well explained :-)

Rajesh Kumar said...

Thanks Rohan Again for posting so many solving techniques.